The believer who mixes with people and is patient with the hurt he or she experiences from them,
is better than people who do not mix with people to avoid bearing the hurt.
~ a hadith of Rasulullah s.a.w.
It took me a long time to learn this... but tonight when we revisited this hadith, I realised I somehow had. Alhamdulillah, alhamdulillah, alhamdulillah, for hidden blessings.
"It's my fault," Conor said. "I let her go. It's my fault."It is not your fault, the monster said, its voice floating in the air around him like a breeze."It is."You were merely wishing for the end of pain, the monster said. Your own pain. An end to how it isolated you. It is the most human wish of all."I didn't mean it," Conor said.You did, the monster said, but you also did not.Conor sniffed and looked up to its face, which was as big as a wall in front of him. "How can both be true?"Because humans are complicated beasts, the monster said. How can a queen be both a good witch and a bad witch? How can a prince be a murderer and a saviour? How can an apothecary be evil-tempered but right-thinking? How can a person be wrong-thinking but good-hearted? How can invisible men make themselves more lonely by being seen?"I don't know, " Conor shrugged, exhausted. "Your stories never made any sense to me."The answer is that it does not matter what you think, the monster said, because your mind will contradict itself a hundred times each day. You wanted her to go at the same time you were desperate for me to save her. Your mind will believe comforting lies while also knowing the painful truths that make those lies necessary. And your mind will punish you for believing both."But how do you fight it?" Conor asked, his voice rough. "How do you fight all the different stuff inside?"By speaking the truth, the monster said. As you spoke it just now.
I'll be at the front of the boat making sure you have a clear path.
The sea won't always be this gentle though. We will be met with wind and waves. And even typhoons will come our way.
So what if we get soaked in the rain? Who cares if the wind blows a bit... when we're in the same boat?
~ Hometown Cha-cha-cha
ohmyheart. This actually reminds me of the end of Lymond, which remains one of the most beautiful quotes to me: "We have reached the open sea, with some charts; and the firmament."
SPOILER WARNING
The last time I felt stunned by a korean drama was when W aired about 5 years ago, and I really could not predict what would happen in the next episode. The show was novel and creative in ways kdrama fandom was utterly unprepared for; it blew our minds, I remember well, hahaha. As a whole though, that show was flawed and did not wrap up well, but I remember thinking, mygoodness, korean entertainment is breaking new ground.
Fast forward to 2021: we have had the Oscar-winning Parasite, and the recent crazy success of Squid Games to corroborate this fact. Korea makes good entertainment, who can deny that now. For me though, I felt wonderfully stunned once again, not by these objectively good productions per se, but by this recent watch of Hometown Cha-cha-cha, whose finale aired tonight.
It is a testament to the evolution of korean drama, that instead of getting the familiar angsty push-pull, sometimes toxic, usually childish, romance drama that we have been fed with for years, we actually get insanely mature romance that I feel I should be taking notes on. It's crazy! Every time I expect our male lead to act a certain way, he acts differently! I am literally gasping from shock and admiration.
I kept thinking, Is this for real? Are we really going to get a healthy functional couple on television working through stuff together?
Here's an example, where they talk about needing to open up but understanding that time is necessary. Not to mention him accepting her confession on the spot, when I was sure he was going to push her away! My jaw dropped, really.
Letting go is like the sudden cessation of an inner pressure or the dropping of a weight. It is accompanied by a sudden feeling of relief and lightness, with an increased happiness and freedom.
It is an actual mechanism of the mind, and everyone has experienced it on occasion.
~ Letting Go, David Hawkins
You have to take delight in the trail. You have to be so happy about the journey that you're not upset that you haven't completed the destination, because you will never complete the destination.
...
Life is dynamic. It will never stand still.
~ Abraham Hicks
I am often reassured by the Prophet s.a.w. saying, "Wisdom is the lost treasure of the believer." 💚 I find gems in the varied things I stumble onto whilst reading or listening or watching something. I am glad I have been able to collect and accumulate them, such that they start to progressively fit like little jigsaw puzzles that provide glimpses of truth and reality.
Sometimes people feel like they have to censor themselves, you know? Like, oh, this person subscribes to an ideology I am against therefore I shall remove him entirely from my mind space. Having been from a minority existence, I found that if I were to listen at all, I often had to listen with discernment. This has enabled me to practise open-mindedness, I feel, without hopefully sacrificing the integrity of my personal values and beliefs. The diversity of knowledge and information out there fascinates me. And to connect the dots between things feels almost cathartic. When people go, "You're reading what???" or "Such and such person is _____, you know." or when they give the ever-threatening look that implied I had crossed some sacred holy line and was about to slip into damnation, I feel like saying, "I'm just reading guys, chiiiiillllll." Of course, not that long ago, it would have involved me blowing up in anger. I'm much older now and instead of being appalled or triggered, I find myself internally going, hmmmmm, neatening up my pile of mental notes anyway, aaaaand moving on.
Datin S has returned (albeit briefly), and I feel like I've been hit by an incidental bout of nostalgia.
The longer the gap between my posts, the harder it is to finally write one, because I get inundated with the varied possibilities of each post: shall I talk about pottery, the new hobby I sort of stumbled (or did I leap) into? shall I talk about our recent profound discussions at book club, about suicide and happiness? or the fact that at a class discussion tonight, we revisited this topic and S shared about her friend surviving a recent ordeal and being glad to be alive? This lady apparently has three kids and I remember marveling how there's no telling what makes someone happy or otherwise. You hear of someone going into depression and getting divorced for not being able to have children, and then you hear of a mother with three children on the brink of suicide. It's mind-boggling.
And then I think of walking home from pottery class the other day, by my lonesome, feeling unbelievably good and happy. Alhamdulillah. Feeling so happy with how much I've grown, how much I've learnt to nurture myself and live in the world as the human being I aspire to be, to have faith and look towards goodness (the clouds of goodness I'm always waiting to rain on me! the retrospectively prophetic name of this space). I have been feeling eternally grateful and somewhat in awe that I have been allowed to feel this way or have this space; this space to be okay. To be okay, Alhamdulillah.
It just feels really nice to work on something with my hands; I just felt the need to do that at some level. It's been really therapeutic, I think. I'm about to splurge more $$$ on tools etc., and god knows how I will obtain an endless amount of clay to play with once my official classes are done. But essentially, the quiet art work is just... something necessary to my well-being, I feel. It's been really good... grounding? Maybe. Inevitably, I also remember my brief stints in art club or art classes when I was younger, and wonder what would have happened if I'd been allowed to pursue this side of my inclinations instead. Typically, everything I do or work with most of my life, even for fun, has been exceedingly cerebral; to be whole, one has to be rounded and delve into those corners too long ignored.
To bring this back around...
what is happiness? An eternally-debated philosophical question, certainly. I'm just glad that I'm developing some skill or perhaps a reflection, that I can choose to be happy. To realise every day that I am alive. To be glad to have faith, the oft-taken-for-granted soul-replenishing element. To look to the pregnant clouds, happily waiting for rain.
It's been raining heavily too these few days!
And we were hoping to walk the Rail Corridor tomorrow.
Ja!
I recently had a dream, that had a quality to it... like glass. Or a mirror. Something about the dream jarred me to attention. Perhaps, I'm more attuned now to growing my Self so that at some level, I am more conscious of the times when I am staring straight on at myself.
The bit that I remember vividly, started when the laughter of family faded away, and somehow I was sitting by myself, in this corner of an old, almost vintage room. It had turquoise walls and low wood paneling, and I was behind a huge desk... with a narrow corner right behind me. For some reason, or because of a low rumbling I sensed from the outside, I went to the window to peek out. I saw beautiful, deep blue waves rolling towards the shore, approaching so close to the walls of my space. I remember feeling stunned, and thinking, my goodness, it's coming. I had also noticed that this beach house I was in was strangely, sitting solidly on the sand. I rushed to another window, and even from this one -- blue waves were approaching. I rushed out, standing on the sand. And these... calm, beautiful, deep blue waves were just quietly approaching. I didn't feel so much scared, as overawed. The water started to wet my feet and reach my ankles. Then I woke up.
All this stuff, in my head. Just like that other dream I once had, about finding eyes behind my eyes. It makes me think about what is real, what is reality, where does it connect... and as Robert Johnson termed it in his books about the psyche: realer than real. Whatever that truly means. But it seems to hit the nail, it seems to hit right.
Then there are other nights -- breaking the somewhat somber mood of this post -- when my dreams consist of insane levels of frivolity, like finding BTS's Park Jimin in my vicinity. And thinking, oh, he's here again, I shan't disturb him. Haha, what a joke! Like Jimin is a boy in my neighbourhood or something. He had fans bothering him (although he looked perpetually kind and smiley) and I had a thought about catching him at another time. In retrospect, I wonder why Jimin. I never declared him my bias (that spot has always toggled between RM, Jin, and Jungkook -- but then, I really love them all, so who knows the deep levels of my mind). Perhaps amidst all the fan-level crazy of this part of my brain, there's meaning somewhere in there too; I have since learnt that all dreams are messages of some sort...? This one though, clearly with a far different level of urgency and gravity.
---
In other happy frivolous news, I have stumbled on possibly a new lister for my top 5 kdramas of all time, Sell Your Haunted House. This drama snuck up on me quietly. It aired a little while back and I didn't jump on it immediately at first. It's about friendship, family, the pain and hurts of life and how humans fail to release them. It's about the choices humans make and how evil comes back around to haunt you. It only teases at romance and leaves us all wanting, not in a bad way. And the backdrop for all this: a story about exorcists chasing ghosts away. Awesommmeee. Also, the cast chemistry is awesommmmme. Jang Nara is phenomenal; I've watched so many of her stuff and she has always been a solid actress, but she blew me away in this show. The ever-charming Yong Hwa added the right level of levity to the story, and balanced out the heavy themes and Jang Nara's gravitas. Chef's kiss for this combo.
Lao-tzu says, "Of the one comes two, and of the two, three. And from the three come ten thousand." By the time we come to the 'three' power of anything, that is, to the transformative moment, the atoms leap, and where there was once lassitude there is now locomotion.
~Women Who Run With The Wolves, Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Esta
It's approaching (hopefully) the end of another work-from-home period; therapy sessions have been suspended, I haven't been able to dine out with friends, and my level of lethargy has steadily risen the longer I lounge in my bedroom. It's all been unbearably soporific and I suppose I should make a point to at least walk outside or something.
I've been spending unhealthy amounts of time on youtube and on one rather productive evening, stumbled on something called Readwise -- which is basically an application that stores all my kindle highlights and notes and reproduces them into bite-size daily information for me to review. What an awesome treasure to find. I started rereading old notes and especially revisited this book, "Women Who Run With the Wolves". Which, I have to declare, is probably the most stunning and impactful nonfiction text I have ever read.
The time with Wild Woman is hard at first. To repair injured instinct, banish naivete, and over time to learn the deepest aspects of psyche and soul, to hold on to what we have learned, to not turn away, to speak out for what we stand for... all this takes a boundless and mystical endurance. When we come up out of the underworld after one of our undertakings there, we may appear unchanged outwardly, but inwardly we have reclaimed a vast and womanly wildness. On the surface we are still friendly, but beneath the skin, we are most definitely no longer tame.
Prescriptions assume that something needs to be fixed; transformation brings forth the healing -- the coming to integrity, to wholeness -- of what is already there. While advice and prescriptions may be useful, even more valuable to us is insight into ourselves and the workings of our minds and bodies. Insight, when inspired by the quest for truth, can promote transformation.
~ Dr. Gabor Mate, When The Body Says No
Unrelated but wanted to record my synchronous moments happening in little happy bits: like M sharing with us on bookclub chat that she was visiting a bookstore in Paris and right behind her was our current read (Kazuo Ishiguro's Klara and the Sun). Also last night I started revisiting some movie soundtracks and came across this awesome song:
Of all the times that I'm finally posting during this fasting month, it's tonight -- as I trudge through some work with the television on. And after re-watching a fun chick flick romantic movie (as I intermittently work, I promise), I finally had the urge to blog and my computer was conveniently in front of me, so here I am.
This was what was running on Netflix as I worked through some random IEP reports.
From the movie, Leap Year:
I hope I find some other time to blog fully about this; but for the moment, I'm just sharing what for me, has been enlightening to the point of tears:
When the unstoppable bullet hits the impenetrable wall, we find the religious experience. It is precisely here that one will grow. Jung once said, "Find out what a person fears most and that is where he will develop next." The ego is fashioned like the metal between the hammer and the anvil.
--
Jung has said that to be in a situation where there is no way out, or to be in a conflict where there is no solution, is the classical beginning of the process of individuation. It is meant to be a situation without solution: the unconscious wants the hopeless conflict in order to put the ego-consciousness up against the wall, so that the man has to realise that whatever he does is wrong, whichever way he decides will be wrong. This is meant to knock out the superiority of the ego, which always acts from the illusion that it has the responsibility of decision. Naturally, if a man says, "Oh well, then I shall just let everything go and make no decision, but just protract and wriggle out," the whole thing is equally wrong, for then naturally nothing happens. But if he is ethical enough to suffer to the core of his personality, then generally... the Self manifests. In religious language you could say that the situation without issue is meant to force the man to rely on an act of God. In psychological language the situation without issue, which the anima arranges with great skill in a man's life, is meant to drive him into a condition in which he is capable of experiencing the Self. When thinking of the anima as the soul guide, we are apt to think of Beatrice leading Dante up to Paradise, but we should not forget that he experienced that only after he had gone through Hell. Normally, the anima does not take a man by the hand and lead him right up to Paradise; she puts him first into a hot cauldron where he is nicely roasted for a while.
--
To consent to paradox is to consent to suffering that which is greater than the ego. The religious experience lies exactly at that point of insolubility where we feel we can proceed no further. This is an invitation to that which is greater than one's self.
~ Owning Your Own Shadow, Robert Johnson
...we must make a shadow, or there would be no culture; then we must restore the wholeness of the personality that was lost in the cultural ideals, or we will live in a state of dividedness that grows more and more painful throughout our evolution. Generally, the first half of life is dedicated to the cultural process -- gaining one's skills, raising a family, disciplining one's self in a hundred different ways; the second half of life is devoted to restoring the wholeness (making holy) of life. One might complain that this is a senseless round trip except that the wholeness at the end is conscious while it was unconscious and childlike at the beginning. This evolution, though it seems gratuitous, is worth all the pain and suffering that it costs. The only disaster would be getting lost halfway through the process and not finding our completion.
~ Owning Your Own Shadow, by Robert Johnson
I finally finished a book of my brother's that I have been hogging, and the final quote in the book put me to tears, despite most of the book being really dry and factual:
We allow ourselves to be blown by the winds because we do know what we want: our hearts know it, even if our thoughts are sometimes slow to follow -- but in the end they do catch up with our hearts and then we think we have made a decision.
~ Leopold Weiss, from 'The Road To Mecca', quoted in Apostate, by Joram van Klaveren
...Dr Umar Faruq Abd-Allah (who) spoke of a horizontal universe, a worldview in which matters are explained solely by comparing them to those that appear to be similar to the object of research. In such a reality there is no purpose, there are no absolutes. Everything is subjective and there exists no absolute Truth. Within it, any metaphysical expression is irrelevant, absurd even. This is the worldview of the postmodern West. I call it macro-nihilism. Opposite to that, he places the earlier mentioned vertical universe. Within the framework, one also looks 'upwards' to the philosophical principles and fundamental points of departure. By inserting the vertical aspect, a proverbial tent arises, a building structure with a benchmark and definitive reality. Human perception of reality, by way of previously mentioned 'first principles', points to that one Reality, God.
been having great reads this past week.
"... if one accepts the premise that the ethos of the Qur'an and Sunna compels a hermeneutic leap of mercy, then the end result is a positive ambiguity -- the kind of ambiguity that leaves believers with a deep sense of humility and hope for humanity."
~ Islam And The Fate Of Others, by Mohammad Hassan Khalil
💗
After repeated plays of this on youtube over the week, I figured I should finally post it here:
If knowledge is for the mind, and experience is for the body, then when you apply knowledge and create a new experience, you teach the body what the mind has intellectually learned. Knowledge without experience is merely philosophy; experience without knowledge is ignorance. There's a progression that has to take place. You have to take knowledge and live it -- embrace it emotionally.
~ Breaking The Habit Of Being You, Joe Dispenza
Thought I'd just post this here, as a personal reminder to stay steadfast on this path of learning to know myself and thence the world, and thence God.
...authenticity is very much a person who lives in alignment with their meaning, with their purpose, with a sense of self-awareness, with an accurate appraisal of their strengths and their weaknesses, and yet don't allow the strength to escalate them into grandiosity, and don't let the perceived weaknesses allow them to fall into a pit of despair. They tend to be relatively well emotionally-regulated, in fact very well emotionally-regulated, however are able to engage in appropriate and vulnerable shows of emotion. Basically they're very self-possessed people. Oftentimes they present as quite serene... Authentic people are interesting because stuff doesn't tend to get under their skin as much, because they're good. They're not necessarily rich or at the top of their game. They're just authentic.
striving for this! 💜 insyallah
okay okay random midnight fangirl post --
(excuse this as an accumulation of stress with work that has spilled over from 2020 but still hasn't ended)
I was binge-watching random youtube videos and then happened to rewatch BTS's Dope, which FYI was my first BTS video ever, and I'd apparently forgotten how energizing this music and video was. It really is an old classic for them (and I can't believe I've been an ARMY for 6 years now!) I remember seeing this for the first time and how my jaw dropped at the performance; just. I hadn't known it then, but it was the start of the descent into the rabbit hole.
but anyway, the point being. This song is awesome when you need to work and slog! Because it says we hustleeee, we work hard and we're dope, and we don't care what you think. I reject rejection!
and oh man, this is so fun, your energy just goes up.
I've been meaning to post properly for so long, but I keep being side-tracked by other things, including a mountain load of reports that are waaaay overdue and lectures to watch -- and my end-year post was too short to be satisfying and I need to produce something a little better for this space! Absolutely absolutely feel the need to write, which I haven't felt in a long while.
But in the meantime, while I sort out the logistics of life, let me just post this here, that I heard:
Don't let your illusions and fear keep you from your inner knowing.
---
Also, happy things I wanted to fangirl about but didn't get around to doing yet:
